Health Disparities Research Loan Repayment Program

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Advanced educational programs, especially the medical degree courses, are very expensive in the United States and can cost you a fortune. Most students have to take commercial or government loans to finance their education. Fortunately, there are some programs, known as loan repayment or loan forgiveness programs that help students to repay their commercial or government loans in exchange for working in certain departments.

If you are a health care professional with some experience in minority health and health disparities, then there is a way for you to pay off your educational loans – you may apply for the NIH Health Disparities Research Loan Repayment Program. Under this program, the NIH will pay back the qualified educational loans of health care professionals and in return the professionals have to participate in their minority health and minority health disparity researches.

The National Institute of Health (NIH), an US Department of Health and Human Service Agency, has introduced various loan repayment programs to induce young physicians and scientists to take up employment with them and become a part of their research programs. The Health Disparities Research Loan Repayment Program is intended to encourage well qualified health professionals to dedicate their time, talent, knowledge, and career to health disparities research. The term health disparity refers to the gaps in health status and health care among different racial and ethnic populations.

The NIH research programs on health disparities mainly concentrate on three areas – minority health research, rural health research, and the research activities pertaining to the socioeconomically disadvantaged section of the urban population. Their research programs are intended to identify, comprehend, diagnose, treat, and avert various types of medical conditions and health problems that are peculiar or more common to the medically under-served and disadvantaged populations.

The populations that are vulnerable to health disparities include African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanics, Native Hawaiians, Alaska Natives, Pacific Islanders, and those people who are medically underserved. The medically underserved people are those American people who do not have primary and specialty care access. The Health Disparities Loan Repayment Program aims to enlist the services of qualified young health professionals to carry out these research programs while paying off their educational loans.

There are certain criteria to apply for the Health Disparities Loan Repayment Program. Any health professional who is a US citizen, permanent resident or national can apply for this educational loans repayment program. The applicants must have an advanced medical degree, such as M.D, D.O, PhD, D.P.M., D.S., D.M.D, D.V.M, Psy.D, N.D., or D.V.S. Those who have an equivalent degree from a recognized institute can also apply for this program. Another prerequisite for applying for this program is that the applicants should have a qualified educational debt equal to or greater than 20% of their salaries.